Winter Is Here

Finally we are working our way through our pictures and are posting some that we took in December.  Here are our two beautiful girls (Lydia wearing a new dress) with our Christmas tree in the background.  The tree is a point of interest for both of them.  Karina likes looking at the ornaments and trying to find pictures of her or us.  She was also interested to see pictures of me when I was a little kid on some of my old ornaments.  Lydia loves the lights and when she is getting tired or upset, one of my tricks is to take her to our living room where we have the tree and point out to her how pretty it is.  It works to calm her down more often than not.

Every year, the National Aquarium in Baltimore has a Dollar Days promotion where all tickets are priced at $1 (regular price is $35 for adults, children are $22).  We had wanted to go in the past, but for one reason or another, never made the trip.  This year, we did, and in spite of spending more than an hour standing in line in the cold to get our tickets, it was a big success.  Karina really liked seeing all the fish and running around, and we liked it too.  Here's Karina with some rays and sharks swimming behind her.

The aquarium has a rain forest area with birds and butterflies with a glass ceiling.  Most of the aquarium was too dark to take pictures, so we took advantage up in the rain forest area.

The dolphin arena was a good spot to sit down and rest.  Lydia was having a blast, and some of the other spectators were laughing at her giggling like crazy when I would kiss her cheeks.  Karina honestly was more interested in a penny that she found under her seat than she was with the dolphins.  Oh well.

We had some snow a couple weeks ago on Sunday - the first snowfall of the season.  Church was cancelled to keep people safe on potentially slick roads, but we took advantage by going outside and taking pictures of Karina in her cute dress.  She was having a blast until it got too cold.

A couple days later, we got even more snow and so Karina and I went out to build a couple snowmen (although I admit they were not the best snowmen I have made).  Karina was excited.  Hopefully we will get even more snow to play in later.

Lydia loves jumping around in her jump-a-roo.

Lydia had her six month birthday last Saturday.  As part of her celebration, she got to try to eat her first solid meal.  We mashed up some avocado and let her play in it a little bit in hopes that she would end up putting some of it in her mouth.  As you can see, she probably wound up with more on her face than in her stomach.  I'm not sure whether she liked the taste or not.

We tried spooning some of the avocado into her mouth.  I think that worked a little better.

To help wash it down, we gave her some kefir (a drink primarily made from cultured milk - Karina ate it when she was a baby).  She didn't scream in protest while eating it, but she didn't exactly seem to give it a ringing endorsement.  This facial expression is just hilarious to me.